


Late Night

by sonictrowel



Series: Long Night in the Blue House [4]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Domestic, F/M, Feelings, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 15:54:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9827441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonictrowel/pseuds/sonictrowel
Summary: ‘All that time,’ he'd thought, back in the Library, clueless and terrified of what it all meant.  All those years to find a way to save her.  And he’d sealed that loop with the neural relay in the screwdriver.  He had to, because he already had done.  But that couldn’t be all of it.  He would never let that be it.





	

The Doctor had been getting a lot more rest on Darillium than he’d had in at least a few hundred years.  Even when sleep itself eluded him, he was never more content than when his sleeping wife had her limbs thrown haphazardly over his body, with her face nestled into his shoulder and her hair periodically trying to suffocate him.  But tonight he had reluctantly disentangled himself from River and sat up on his side of the bed, watching her soft, even breathing in the dim starlight, waiting to be sure she wouldn’t wake.

He crept out of the bedroom, through the corridor, and opened the linen cupboard.  The familiar ambient hum of the time rotor was at once comforting and alarming— the sudden thought of somehow being whisked away across time and space sent a cold wave of dread through him.  But, of course, River was here too; they lived in the TARDIS all the time, even if he rarely glimpsed the control room.  And the TARDIS knew better than anyone how important it was that he stay.

The desktop was really very dreary, he thought.  (And why the hell had he gotten rid of the comfortable jump seat?)  He’d have to change it to something warmer again.  If he succeeded.  When he succeeded.

He rummaged through a cupboard until he discovered a leather-cushioned office chair, and lugged it up to the console.  “Alright, Old Girl,” he murmured, pulling down the monitor and keying in a passcode that brought up centuries of his research, “back to work.”

 

‘All that time,’ he'd thought, back in the Library, clueless and terrified of what it all meant.  All those years to find a way to save her.  And he’d sealed that loop with the neural relay in the screwdriver.  He had to, because he already had done.  But that couldn’t be all of it.  He would never let that be it.

But she’d come to him, all those centuries ago on Trenzalore, to say goodbye.   _Why?_ Why the hell would she still be in there, waiting?  Of course he could hardly bear to acknowledge her then.  If she was real, he’d failed.  And even if he _couldn’t_ properly save her, he would have gone to her, in any possible form, no matter how it hurt.  How the fuck could he leave her alone and trapped?  He had been a coward before, but _he’d_ been running from Darillium, so desperate to keep her alive that he sentenced himself to a thousand years without her.  

The one who would leave her like a book on a shelf— it would be _him_ , in the future.  When all their days were gone and their timelines came full circle, it would be _him_ who didn’t go back for her.  And that was not fucking possible.

He had saved so many in his lifetime, against such ridiculous odds. That twisted, angry part of him that had been shrivelling by the moment in River’s company suddenly reared up in his mind. It loomed over him with the furious thought that none of them had deserved it.  Not one of them was worth what she was.  Not one living thing.  

He ran over all the usual dead ends.  The extra Mire chip he’d given Ashildr so she could share her immortality with one person she couldn’t bear to lose: wasted.  He’d been thinking of nothing but River and wanting to spare another his pain.  But that wouldn’t have gotten her a body, anyway.

The Pandorica.  He’d known, then.  Of course he’d known who River was, just too scared to admit it.  He should have been thinking of her.  He should have been figuring out a way to shine the light on that horrible moment and save her.  But now, it had never existed. 

New regenerations, wasted on him when he owed them all to River.  He didn’t want another lifetime, let alone however many he might have now, without her.  Why couldn’t _he_ be the one in that Library instead of that idiot Sandshoes, who had no fucking _idea_ what he was losing?  He’d do just what she’d done for him: he’d pour every bit of life he had into her body to save her, and then they’d both be on their last one together again.  They could live out their days just like this.  

But it didn’t happen that way.  And he couldn’t risk changing it.  Not one line.

There was a glaring, twisting gap winding through his memories that he’d been steadfastly avoiding thinking on, because when he tried to puzzle it out he felt queasy and lost.  And he’d had plenty of much better and more pressing things to hold his attention lately.  Reluctantly, he went back to it, trying to trace the blurry events still intact along its edges.  

Missy.  If there was someone who knew a thing or two about evading death despite a lack of regenerations, it was his oldest friend.  That sick feeling grew when he thought about what he could recall of their recent encounters— the absolute horror of the reanimated dead.  But River wasn’t like other humans.  She was like him, like Missy.

But he couldn’t risk trying to get Missy involved.  There was too much that could go wrong by making such a treacherous ally.  If Missy saw her chance to have him burn a few planets or solar systems or the entire bloody universe in exchange for River, he had little doubt that he’d do it.  She wouldn’t thank him for that.

“You must know,” the Doctor whispered, pushing back the monitor when none of his research yielded a promising lead, for probably the ten thousandth time.  It was worrying that that wasn’t hyperbole.  

“You must know what I do, don’t you?”  He looked around the console room, trying to read an answer in the dimming and brightening of the ring of lights along the walls.  “Do I save her?”

Brighter, dimmer, brighter, dimmer.  He'd no idea what it meant.  But River would know.  River always knew.

“Please.  Help me save her.”

___

When the Doctor slid back between the sheets beside her, River made a sleepy little sound and edged closer to him, nestling her back against his chest.  He sighed heavily into her hair as he wrapped his arm around her, trying to clear his mind of another night’s failures and bring his thoughts back to the wonderful present.  Every moment of this, he’d promised them both.  They’d make every moment count.  He still had lots of time.

He bent his head, nuzzling his nose into her curls and planting warm, open-mouthed kisses along the back of her neck and the exposed curve of her shoulder.  She shivered and sighed, pressing closer to him.  He almost felt bad for waking her, but he knew well enough that she was always delighted with this sort of silent wake-up call in the wee hours of the ‘morning.’  And it wasn’t as if they couldn’t have a lie-in later.

His hand slipped under the hem of her shirt, brushing softly over her stomach.  She ground her arse deliberately against him in response, and he grinned, sure that she was now pretty much fully awake.  His hand crept higher, cupping her breast, callused fingertips gently tracing over her skin. She made a quiet whinging sound, exhaling through her nose, and reached back behind her, tangling her fingers in his hair.  He was quite sure now that she not-so-secretly loved the grey.

The Doctor propped himself on an elbow and leaned over her face, and River twisted round as much as she could toward him, their mouths crashing together in a deep, eager kiss.  He reached down to fumble with his pyjama bottoms and her knickers, stripping them down without moving his mouth from hers.  She kicked them off of her feet, hips rolling urgently back into him, her skin blissfully hot and soft where he pressed hard against it.  

He broke away from her mouth to turn her gently onto her stomach, taking the opportunity to pull her shirt over her head, followed by his own.  River grabbed the pillows from the head of the bed and piled them under her hips, resting her head on her folded arms, her hair spilling over her face.  The Doctor draped himself over her, pressing every possible inch of their skin together, revelling in her warmth and leaving a trail of kisses over her back.  He braced himself on one arm while his other hand reached around her and settled between her thighs.  She moaned softly.

“Love you,” he whispered against her neck.

“Love you,” she whispered in return, and he could hear the smile in her voice.  She let out a throaty whimper as he circled his fingertips against her just so, then she shifted her hips until they were aligned, and he pressed forward, and everything was warmth and bliss and the sounds of their breathing and _River._

___

The Doctor woke to the aroma of coffee and bread and the warm crackling sound of the bedroom fireplace.  He cracked an eye open to see his wife, wild hair silhouetted in the yellow glow of the bedside lamp, smiling down at him.

“River,” he mumbled, voice rough from sleep.  "W's this?"

“Breakfast in bed,” she replied sunnily.  “Rise and shine, darling.”

He twisted his torso to look up fully at her, rubbing the heel of his palm into his eye and grimacing in the glare of the lamplight.  “Whassit?”

Her warm, self-satisfied laugh brought him a little more into the land of the living.  “Someone wore himself out last night.”  River reached down and helped pull him up to a seated position before climbing in beside him to sit back against the headboard.  She lifted a tray containing said breakfast from the bedside table and settled it on their laps. 

The Doctor smiled blearily at her.  She was just too good.  Everything about her was too good. 

She flushed a little and leaned in to kiss his cheek.

“Heard that, did you?” he grumbled amiably.

“Mm,” she replied with a smile, taking a sip of her coffee.  “A bit.”

“Thanks for breakfast,” he said, picking up the mug of black (with an ungodly number of sugars) she’d prepared for him and looking over the array of butter and jams.

“Well, you made it.  I just took it out of the Samey Cupboard and did the coffee.”

“'s better when you’ve touched it,” he said, spreading a slice of brioche with the jam he’d made from the night-blooming blackberries that had sprung up in the back garden.  “It does a thing.”

River twisted her lips, completely failing to hide her smile.  “Sentimental idiot,” she said, with not a trace of the old scorn.

“Yep,” he said brightly, and leaned over to kiss her temple.

 


End file.
